Andrea Dworkin gave a speech in 1983 to college students at a school in New York. I found the speech to be very interesting and informative. She talked a lot about sexual assaults on women. To my knowledge, none of my friends have been sexually assaulted so I have never really had a conversation about it. This speech educated me on the different ways women are sexually assaulted and how common it is. The thing I found most interesting in class was our discussion on these different ways that Dworkin talked about. .
Incest is one of the ways women are sexually assaulted according to Andrea Dworkin. This is when a family member takes advantage of another family member sexually. This experience is so horrifying that victims almost never recover from it. They think about it everyday and it interferes with their daily activities. Most incest cases involve young children, usually female children that are being sexually assaulted by men. I see how this would definitely affect a child because I have seen it happen to one of my own family members. A distant cousin of mine was molested as a young child by his stepfather. Grant was a great little boy until he went to live with his mother and new stepfather. The molestation was going on for over a year before anyone found out about it, and by that time, he was sexually assaulted countless times. Grant is not the same child he used to be due to this. He has not recovered even after thousands of dollars spent on therapy and medication. He is now violent, abusive and disobeys the law. We all know it is an outrage to the fact that he was molested and that it went on for so long. After reading what Dworkin had to say about incest, I now understand why Grant acts the way he does. He will remember every incident for life and will never recover from it. My heart aches for him.
One of the other cases that Dworkin discusses about sexual assault is marital rape.
